Carli 17-23 FORD BRONCO FRONT TORSION SWAY BAR

One of our first expeditions in the Bronco was to Cleghorn Trail; a local Jeep/OHV hot-spot. Through the center, a mild dirt road navigates you from the 15 Freeway to Silverwood Lake. The fun is in the offshoots and side-trails varying in difficulty from mild to wild. One of our favorites is Edison Hill; serving as the base for a power line tower, the short treck offers a few lines to test the flex of which your rig is capable. Below, you’ll see it in STOCK form.

It took one trek up this hill to see how stiff the Wildtrak front sway bar was. There was VERY little articulation resulting in us carrying the tire with a relatively flat chassis through most of these holes. We parked at the top of the tower, pulled the factory sway bar and found the Bronco had FAR better traction and performance through the same sections.

With the day a wrap, we headed back to the highway – sway bar still in cargo – to find the on-road manners suffer tremendously while at speed without the sway bar. Luckily, we’ve dealt with this before in the HD Ram and Ford Applications. So began our development of our Torsion Sway Bar Assembly.

As with the shock tuning, we’re after balance. We wanted a sway bar that would allow us to maintain traction while articulating off-road while providing the support we need on-road. It took us a few different torsion spring rates to nail it but, combined with our Carli-SPEC King 2.5″ shocks, we now have a Bronco that rails high-speed corners like a sports car and articulates as though the sway bar has been disconnected.

The arm is constructed from 3/4″ Steel that’s machined, then bent to shape. The bar is connected to the arm by a broached insert and locked down with a pinch bolt. Connecting the bar to the frame are our 6061 Billet bushing housings.

On the other end, you’ll find our 17-4 stainless steel sway bar end links. The sway bar connection is handled by a teflon-lined FK, 12-point bolts and Stainless misalignment spacer.

The arm connection is our greasable, preload-adjustable stainless ball stud with bronze races, square o-ring (to seal and hold tension), and boot to keep the elements out. the construction is very similar to our inner tie-rod.